Disappointing story of loss, love and a father’s obsession with finding his missing daughter.
Stina Jackson’s debut is the story of a heartbroken father, his quest for answers about the disappearance of his seventeen-year-old daughter and his eventual journey to redemption and in all honesty I found it something of a bizarre read. Whilst never quite a mystery novel nor a profoundly moving exploration of humanity it is obviously intended as a tale of damaged people looking for hope in the isolated northern Sweden region of Norrland and their struggle to survive in the punishing autumn darkness, snow buried winter and intense summer sunlight.
The novel takes the form of a dual narrative with middle-aged maths teacher, Lennart Gustafsson (Lelle) a broken man after the disappearance of his beloved seventeen-year-old daughter, Lina, three years ago when he left her at a bus stop on the Silver Road. His guilt surrounding Lina has ended his marriage to Annete and left him relying on alcohol, cigarettes and as little sleep as possible as he spends his waking hours searching the uninhabited territory along the Silver Road. As he harangues the police for progress and urges the community never to forget Lina he exudes a menacing air of suspicion with Lina’s then boyfriend, local rich boy and dope dealer, Mikael Varg occupying his principle focus.
In a second narrative seventeen-year-old Meja Nordlander moves into the region with her unstable, alcohol dependent and psychologically damaged mother, Silje, after her mother meets Tornbjörn Fors online and starts a relationship. Having lived at thirty different addresses in her young life and struggling to extricate herself from her needy mother, Meja is soon enlightened that the new man in her mother’s life is known locally as Pornbjörn due to his unrivalled collection of pornographic magazines and videos. Seeking an escape for this miserable existence she explores the local landscape and encounters a trio of brothers who take their lead from their survivalist father, Birger Brandt, predicting imminent warfare and the end of the world. As Meja finds understanding and support and falls head over heels with charismatic Carl-Johan it appears that in the Brandt family she has found the family life that she has always longed for, but as a vulnerable young girl she soon finds herself desperately out of her depth..
When another girl bearing a striking resemblance to Lina disappears along the Silver Road it gives Lelle hope of a reignited police search and possible connection between the two as he returns to teaching and also meets the new student in his class, Meja. This all occurs rather abruptly with disappointingly little foreshadowing and similar to Meja encountering goth girl, Crow, on several occasions it seems to crop up out of nowhere with little explanation. The setting is a familiar one and sadly it appears that all that is required for a novel to be described as atmospheric in Scandinavian fiction is a remote, isolated village surrounded by dense forests, dilapidated dwellings and populated by the usual oddball eccentrics that now appear almost obligatory.
It is evident that the dual narrative and stories of Lelle and Meja will coalesce and by a third of the way through the novel it will be painfully obvious to any savvy reader how they will do so. Disappointing for two-thirds of the novel both narratives follow a repetitive cycle of none too interesting developments with Lelle lamenting, smoking and hitting the bottle and Meja’s dependent, dysfunctional mother attention seeking. Lelle’s thread is short on revelations and hence the suspenseful mystery element of The Silver Road is a non-starter. Sadly I felt the characters were rather flat and whilst I could appreciate both Lelle and Meja’s plight I never felt Stina Jackson scratched the surface of their characters.
The final third sees both threads reach a head and provides a rushed denouement that is disappointingly contrived and offers little more than platitudes. Some sense of a timeline would have made for a more comprehensive feel to the unfolding action, yet despite my misgivings about the novel and limited characterisation it held my interest enough to see it through to a conclusion despite its obvious predictability. Translator, Susan Beard, has made an excellent job of rendering the prose into English and this makes for fluid reading and none of the clunkiness that often blights translated fiction. Not quite the propulsive and atmospheric mystery that I had expected but a slow-burn despairing journey for redemption, answers and understanding that strikes a distinctly gloomy note.
The novel takes the form of a dual narrative with middle-aged maths teacher, Lennart Gustafsson (Lelle) a broken man after the disappearance of his beloved seventeen-year-old daughter, Lina, three years ago when he left her at a bus stop on the Silver Road. His guilt surrounding Lina has ended his marriage to Annete and left him relying on alcohol, cigarettes and as little sleep as possible as he spends his waking hours searching the uninhabited territory along the Silver Road. As he harangues the police for progress and urges the community never to forget Lina he exudes a menacing air of suspicion with Lina’s then boyfriend, local rich boy and dope dealer, Mikael Varg occupying his principle focus.
In a second narrative seventeen-year-old Meja Nordlander moves into the region with her unstable, alcohol dependent and psychologically damaged mother, Silje, after her mother meets Tornbjörn Fors online and starts a relationship. Having lived at thirty different addresses in her young life and struggling to extricate herself from her needy mother, Meja is soon enlightened that the new man in her mother’s life is known locally as Pornbjörn due to his unrivalled collection of pornographic magazines and videos. Seeking an escape for this miserable existence she explores the local landscape and encounters a trio of brothers who take their lead from their survivalist father, Birger Brandt, predicting imminent warfare and the end of the world. As Meja finds understanding and support and falls head over heels with charismatic Carl-Johan it appears that in the Brandt family she has found the family life that she has always longed for, but as a vulnerable young girl she soon finds herself desperately out of her depth..
When another girl bearing a striking resemblance to Lina disappears along the Silver Road it gives Lelle hope of a reignited police search and possible connection between the two as he returns to teaching and also meets the new student in his class, Meja. This all occurs rather abruptly with disappointingly little foreshadowing and similar to Meja encountering goth girl, Crow, on several occasions it seems to crop up out of nowhere with little explanation. The setting is a familiar one and sadly it appears that all that is required for a novel to be described as atmospheric in Scandinavian fiction is a remote, isolated village surrounded by dense forests, dilapidated dwellings and populated by the usual oddball eccentrics that now appear almost obligatory.
It is evident that the dual narrative and stories of Lelle and Meja will coalesce and by a third of the way through the novel it will be painfully obvious to any savvy reader how they will do so. Disappointing for two-thirds of the novel both narratives follow a repetitive cycle of none too interesting developments with Lelle lamenting, smoking and hitting the bottle and Meja’s dependent, dysfunctional mother attention seeking. Lelle’s thread is short on revelations and hence the suspenseful mystery element of The Silver Road is a non-starter. Sadly I felt the characters were rather flat and whilst I could appreciate both Lelle and Meja’s plight I never felt Stina Jackson scratched the surface of their characters.
The final third sees both threads reach a head and provides a rushed denouement that is disappointingly contrived and offers little more than platitudes. Some sense of a timeline would have made for a more comprehensive feel to the unfolding action, yet despite my misgivings about the novel and limited characterisation it held my interest enough to see it through to a conclusion despite its obvious predictability. Translator, Susan Beard, has made an excellent job of rendering the prose into English and this makes for fluid reading and none of the clunkiness that often blights translated fiction. Not quite the propulsive and atmospheric mystery that I had expected but a slow-burn despairing journey for redemption, answers and understanding that strikes a distinctly gloomy note.